


The Tiger and the Unicorn

by secrets_secrets



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Allergies, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Biting, Blood, Blood Magic, Dubious Consent, Healing Sex, Humiliation, Lion and the Unicorn motif, M/M, Menstruation, Rape/Non-con Elements, Scent Marking, Sex Pollen, Slavery, Spirit Animals, Virginity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:05:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secrets_secrets/pseuds/secrets_secrets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where some men are born 'animal-blooded,' the rare unicorn-blooded are prized creatures -- hunted, kept, or killed for their magical powers.  One unicorn isn't willing to accept his place in the system, and runs.  He doesn't account for a tiger-blooded unicorn hunter with other plans.</p>
<p>Then again, neither of them really accounted for each other.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tags updated as of the latest chapter/installment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crofter, Friar, Thatcher, Cobbler

The first place he stopped was a small farm with a broken fence whose only tenants were the farmer and his daughter, a small girl of perhaps six, and when he stopped there in his strange, fine clothes, he was James (surname not given), a man (profession unstated) on the business of the king. The little girl, fearful for whatever her father had gotten himself into, invited him to help himself to whatever he pleased; so he took some of the farmer’s clothes and his straw hat and told the little girl to mind the king’s laws and her father, and he burned the old clothes by a stream in the woods and became a crofter named Richard Brook.

The second place he stopped was a monastery, which was more people than he would’ve liked, but it was a monastery, so it was safe, and no one there had heard the news, so he lied again and came away from it this time with a heel of bread and a pony, and he managed to lift a monk’s robe, and the hood covered his hair and his forehead nicely, better than the straw hat, because no one was interested enough to look, and he became a monk named Friar Nicholas.

At the third place, he haggled for black dye with a rheumy old woman, and he dyed the hair on his scalp and his eyebrows and his armpits and his groin (never too careful, never too thorough) till the irridescent winter white turned to cindersoot, and when he looked at his reflection in the water, he was surprised to see he looked so very much like a man, or maybe a raven. He would’ve liked to have been born raven-blooded — theirs was a lucky lot. He could’ve done so much with it. He stayed Friar Nicholas till he got used to himself.

At the fourth place, he got a cart for the pony. At the fifth place, he stole a few bales of straw and put it in the cart, and became a thatcher named Rob.

By the sixth place, he had a plan, and he traded the hay for beads and buttons, and the beads for thread and shoes, and he sewed the buttons onto the shoes and sold them for twice their worth, and used the money to buy glass bottles and cork and a slightly better set of clothes.

At the seventh place, he spat in each bottle, filled the rest with water from the creek, and corked them, put on his new clothes and became a panhandler named Solomon, and started selling the bottles to old men as Miracle Rejuvenating Elixir, and when they saw some of their wrinkles smooth out, he made money hand over fist — but he was careful not to draw too much attention to it, because that wasn’t safe, so he used the money this time to buy a proper wagon and a proper horse, and he left the cart behind and set the pony free along the road. The pony was probably too stupid to sell anyway, he told himself. It barely walked a straight line without getting confused.

Along the way to the eighth place — because he never stayed long wherever he went, not back then — he charmed a group of traveling performers out of a few cans of brightly colored paint, and his wagon became an advertisement for The Great Moriarty, and he made even more money as a traveling soothsayer, but he started putting only water in most of the bottles he sold, so that by the time he was a few small farm communities away from where he’d been, people believed the Great Moriarty was just another swindler and forgot to start rumors that he had any real powers, and his tracks quietly covered themselves.

At the eleventh or twelfth place, he bought what he needed to diversify his business, and he wore a smart black tunic, trousers, and robes, and repainted his wagon, and became a raven named James Villiers, and when the wagon rolled on, the bright reds and yellows were gone, and it read, in austere white letters, _APOTHECARY_.

And that was his new business.

People, he discovered with no real surprise, liked doing business with the raven-blooded. Like fox-bloods, they weren’t considered trusthworthy, but they were considered intelligent — which James certainly was — and it inspired a certain degree of confidence in his wares.

He sold whatever he could sell — poisons of all manner and duration, and panaceas too, and he spat in some of the cures he sold to make them surprisingly efficacious. And though he had to stay away from large towns, and be very careful about visiting the ones he did, he was very good at being an apothecary, over all, and he could brew mixtures to deaden his sense of smell, which helped, and he began to see it as a good long-term business plan, a doorway to some degree of power, which could buy safety, which in turn meant happiness of some kind. It was freedom.

It was at the thirty-fourth place, a little country brothel in the middle of nowhere that should have been safe, that James ran into trouble.

The brothel wasn’t quite as quiet as he had been expecting — too many horses hitched up to the post outside for such an out-of-the-way place — but brothels were good business for him, and he could always count on the women to be safe there, and he’d started to feel cocky about how things were going, so he drew the wagon up and stopped in for a spot of salesmanship and lodgings for the night.

The lights were warm yellow and someone had struck up a tune, and some of the women had taken up dancing with some of the patrons. James smiled when he entered, feeling cheered by the chance to socialize a bit. He winked at one of the women, and pinched another on her plump little ass as he wove past tables, looking for the proprietor of this surprisingly successful establishment.

Along the way, he felt a chill run up his spine, and James looked around to find that he was being watched by a huge blond man at one of the tables near the fireplace. His clothing and his musculature said _woodsman_ , and his stare said _danger_ , but showing apprehension would’ve given away everything, so James winked instead, and the man raised both eyebrows at that, clearly a little surprised, but he went back to his dice game with the other men at the table and left James be. Relieved, he found the innkeeper and ordered a room for himself — no, no company, thank you, he was exhausted from his travels and wouldn’t be himself enough to take a woman till tomorrow morning — and they moved on to a quieter corner of the inn to discuss business briefly before he showed James up to his room.

About an hour later, feeling his stomach start to pitch with hunger, James drifted back out of his rented room to see what they had in the kitchens that he might be able to stomach. He’d barely latched his door shut when he turned and found the blond woodsman blocking his path.

Fuck. Had he miscalculated?

Flaring his nostrils wide, he tried to pick up some scent, something that would tell him what kind of danger he was in, but of course there was nothing — the tonic he took before he went into public places knocked out his sense of smell entirely, and he’d never risked going without it. 

“Excuse me,” James said calmly, trying to get past him.

The woodsman circled around him appraisingly, moving out of his way and sizing him up all at the same time. James, in turn, put on an amused, haughty look. _Remember, you’re a raven, you’re a raven_.

“I know a funny joke,” the woodsman said to his retreating back as James walked away. He had a low voice like a growl. He didn’t seem to mind the sudden departure, or the fact that James didn’t answer, but kept talking. 

“ _A unicorn walks into a brothel._ ”

His quiet, rumbling laughter followed James down the stairs.

It was time to go.


	2. A Pack and a Plan

It would be safer, he decided, to slip away after full dark had descended. If the woodsman was planning on trying to attack him, he obviously didn’t care to do it with other people looking on, since he hadn’t exposed James yet.

He must have smelled him. What did that make him, a fox-blood? A hound, perhaps? James was small, but his unicorn aspect made him stronger than men, and stronger than foxes or hounds, too. Foxes, like ravens, you had to watch out for because they were shrewd, they were puzzle-solvers — they had wits beyond regular men and made fierce opponents, for it. Hounds weren’t clever in any special way, just everyday sorts of people, but they were natural pack animals, which was what made them formidable. Neither one was individually a threat to James: he could handle a single fox or a hound with his bare hands, so long as he could keep the blood off of him. But a hound had a pack and a fox had a plan, and it was always wise not to stick around for either.

Those were the common sorts, of the ones that had better-than-human senses of smell. It was hard to imagine any of your larger beasts would’ve been so hesitant to make a move, and the odds were against them. People tended to find them too threatening. They didn’t last long in the wild.

James couldn’t disguise his own scent — you could hide a smell from a human, but not a human who was aspected to a _canine_ — so he’d been counting on sheer mathematical odds to protect him. There were virtually no unicorn-bloods left in the world who survived outside of captivity (none but _one_ , none but _him_ ). If he ran into someone with an animal aspect, most wouldn’t know the smell. He smeared his body with ravenswing every morning, too, wherever he had glands — that muddied things up a bit for the nose.

He went back up to his room after he’d eaten to throw some of his things back into his bag — only what he needed, he’d have to leave most of it with the wagon and start all over again — then waited another half an hour till it was full dark before he slipped down the back staircase for private clients (mostly unused, dusty) and out into the quiet of the courtyard.

James unhitched his horse from the wagon, grabbed the rest of the bottles of his tonic from inside, and fled. About a mile down the road, he pulled the horse off the track and led them both down a steep bank to the river and started peeling off his tunic. He doused it in the water and used it to scrub frantically at his own skin, trying to take as much of the scent off as he could, then did the same to his horse. If the woodsman was a hound . . .

“You really are strange beasts, do you know that?” a voice came from close behind him.

James turned to find the woodsman crouched at the top of the riverbank, predatory and patient.

He stood his ground, _you’re a raven, you’re a raven_ , but his horse immediately picked up on his anxiety and pawed at the ground, frightened. Traitor. Coward. James let go the reins and settled his wet tunic over the horse’s back, giving it a soothing pat. Stay here.

“Something I can help you with?” he asked smoothly, picking out a tree at the side of his vision and taking a step towards it. He didn’t stand much chance climbing it, since that wouldn’t get him anywhere, but he could put it as a useful obstacle between them when he ran. Being unicorn-blooded left him built for long-distance running. “Poisoning your friends will have to wait for the morning. I’m afraid I’ve closed up shop for the night.”

The woodsman grinned. “I’d say you’ve gone out of business.”

A few more steps. His horse followed him; good boy.

So did the woodsman, though, who stood up from his crouch and advanced calmly towards him. He stalked dead silently through the grass. Canines didn’t, couldn’t. A hawk? Perhaps a hawk. Hawks had such sharp eyes. Maybe he’d spotted the dye in his hair.

“Not at all,” James told him, still crossing one foot over the next toward the tree. “Business has never been better.”

“You know, the hair did throw me, for a moment. It looks very natural.”

“It is very natural.”

“ _No_. And the smell — did you let a raven fuck you? Your smell’s half raven spit and half you.”

“How sweet.” He put his back to the tree. The woodsman was just a few noiseless steps away.

“Ah, but I’ve hunted your kind before. I know that pretty perfume.” He flared his nostrils, inhaling deeply. James took a step to the side, starting to circle the tree. The woodsman followed. “Mostly that’s just taken the raven off. I can still smell you. Skittish little unicorn smells like _fear_.”

A hound, a wolf? _I’ve hunted your kind before_. A hound, it had to be a hound. Where was its pack? The kind of pack that once hunted down the unicorn-blooded was no small thing. Another sidestep circling the trunk of the tree. Again the woodsman followed. James tried to smell the air, but it was no use.

The woodsman cocked his head to one side. “The way you winked at me earlier . . . you can’t smell a thing, can you? That’s why you can’t tell what I am. You poor, daft beast — you knew you were more at risk of your own body betraying you than of running into someone like me, didn’t you?” He laughed. “More virgins in the world than people with sharp noses, after all.”

James despised being baited. “It didn’t seem fair to deprive some of the world’s virgins of me, and not others,” he said, more calmly than he felt. They were circling opposite sides of the tree now.

The woodsman snorted. He could tell James was planning to make a run for it at any moment. “The prince’s woods are two miles east of here,” he tried reasoning. “He’s invited me to attend his annual fox hunt, along with his own loyal pack of hunting dogs. They’ve had exotic game before as well. Listen to me, unicorn — you wouldn’t last ten miles if you ran.”

To hell with that. He ran anyway.

James bolted away from the tree and into a dead run, his feet flying over the ground underneath him. His unicorn blood made him fleet of foot, and that stood him some chance of making an escape, at least long enough to gain the saddle of his horse which ran alongside (good boy, loyal boy). The woodsman was held up by having to curve around the tree James had placed between them, too — that was good. The odds were good. James needed to start putting a lot of distance between the two of them immediately, and not stop till the woodsman’s sun-beaten gold hair faded from memory.

The woodsman moved without making any noise, so James had no warning before he was tossed forward, tackled bodily to the ground. The woodsman had him pinned, and though James struggled to throw him off, he couldn’t: it was clear his opponent had the superior strength in his blood. Definitely no hound, then.

He snarled angrily as he was flipped over onto his back, trapped under the woodsman’s grip. The woodsman laughed, dark and cruel. “I’m a _tiger_ , you stupid cunt. You never stood the least chance.”

A _tiger_. How in hell was a tiger-blood running wild that hadn’t already been put down? Everyone in existence knew they were dangerous freaks who couldn’t stop killing and were never sated. Who would _invite one_ to their _fox hunt_?

“What do you want?” James hissed. “Why am I still alive? Is that more fun for you, you mindless savage? If I run?”

The tiger threw his head back and laughed. Was _everything_ so goddamned amusing to him? “It is,” he admitted, readjusting his weight so he could pin James to the ground with one hand to his throat. “A unicorn is much better sport than a fox. And better dinner, too.” He looked back down at James and continued, “But that isn’t why. I want to strike a bargain with you.”

James raised both eyebrows solicitously, as though they were having a genteel conversation and he had any option other than hearing the tiger out. It was a difficult farce to maintain, but if one was haughty enough — and James was — it could be managed. “I’m listening.”

“You’re going somewhere. Not just from somewhere, from wherever you ran away — I see how you travel. You’re going _to_ somewhere. Travel with me, and I’ll deliver you there in safety.”

James looked away. “And now I suppose you’re going to name your price. Spare me the tiresome melodrama and just say it,” he said coldly.

“I get to have you,” the tiger said, tipping James’s face back up with two fingers so he had to look at him. James could feel the echoing sting of a thousand hands on his face, moving his head this way and that. He hardly needed a reminder of what that felt like.

“Joy. And when is the happy event to take place?”

“No, no, not just the _once_ , that would hardly be fair at all, would it? No. I get to fuck you whenever I want.” He grinned. “You know. For health purposes. Supposed to keep you young and all that. That’s the trade.”

James looked him dead in the face and resisted the urge to tell a tiger with its hand around his throat to go fuck itself.

Apparently the tiger had expected he would need a little coaxing. He leaned in till his sharp, vicious teeth were next to James’s ear. “I’m going to fuck you anyway,” he whispered. “There’s this old crick in my back that I’d love to get rid of, and I bent my thumb tackling you. All I’m asking you for is the same thing every unicorn does the world over. At least I’ll look after you.”

When that didn’t provoke a response, he tried a different tack. “Those hounds aren’t far off, if you’d rather take your chances. If we stay here, they’ll find us, and most likely I’d have to fight them. Now, maybe I win and we’re back to the part where I fuck you, only now I’m covered with blood, and I know how much your kind likes that. Fucking inconvenient little allergy for you, isn’t it? Weak little cunts that you are. But maybe I don’t win. Let’s say maybe they kill me first, and then it’s just you and them. Big pack of angry dogs — have you ever seen a hunting pack take down a unicorn? You can hit hard, and that might get one or two of them knocked out of the running, but like as not, that’s going to piss them the hell off. If you’re lucky, they’ll just slit your throat, bleed you, skin you, and hack up the rest of you into pieces for sale. If you’re not lucky, maybe they’ve all got cricks in their back and bent thumbs need fixing, and after they’re done with you, they tear you to shreds with their teeth.” He snapped his jaws illustratively. Terribly unnecessary.

 _And what’s your incentive to actually take me where I want to go?_ James wondered. It was too early to tip his hand, though, and his sense of dignity bridled too much at being blackmailed into whoring himself to be willing to offer any sort of honesty. He could play along with this for now. “You make a convincing case.”

The tiger grinned. Again. “Don’t I? I thought you’d see it my way.”

He hoisted himself up, and pulled James by the arm up after him. “Come on, unicorn, let’s get moving. Get your bag and your horse.”


	3. Medium Rare

Sebastian was under no illusions that James Villiers was really the unicorn’s name. Generally, unicorns weren’t given surnames — they were tested at birth, then spirited away as royal property to be placed wherever the fuck the crown wanted them: in the palace, in service in some favored noble’s house, in a menagerie. And most people, they didn’t even use the first names they’d given them — just sent for “the unicorn” when they wanted it brought.

In Sebastian’s opinion, it was probably better for them that way, anyhow — your village folk tended to get stab-happy when a plague swept through and they had a convenient unicorn about. Oh, sure, at first it was always just the way that stupid little unicorns who tried to run away imagined it; _thank you, you’ve saved us, you’ve saved us all, bless you, please confer your divine blessings on my firstborn_ and all that shit. But it never took too long before someone got to thinking _what if the unicorn leaves town and the plague comes back?_ and someone else started talking how things carved from the bones of a unicorn-blood held onto their power forever, and from there it was a short fucking causal leap to a dead unicorn.

But unicorns were stupid, and they always got it into their heads that things would be better somehow if they ran off from their weird fucking lives.

For their dinner, Sebastian caught and killed a rabbit. The unicorn watched him do it with morbid curiosity and what he guessed was probably some kind of missish discomfort, so he did the whole thing with a bit of extra flourish, holding up each skinned-off tract of fur in the firelight as he cut it loose.

He cooked it over the fire slowly, until it was juicy and delicious, dripping with smoky flavor, then sank his teeth in and sighed. After the first few bites, he figured he ought to start letting James share the rest, and offered the stick with the rabbit skewered on it over to him.

“I can’t eat that,” James said icily.

Sebastian took it back and tore off another bite, the price for hesitation on James’s part. “What’s the matter, too many eyeballs for you? Don’t like it when your food looks back?”

“It’s still bloody,” he said.

Sebastian had killed and eaten more rabbits in his life than he could count, and was dead certain this one had cooked all the way through. He couldn’t decide whether James’s blood allergy really was that strong, or if he was just being an uppity bitch. “Well, you boil your own fucking shoeleather stew, then,” he invited, setting back to devouring the rabbit. He knew James had gotten some kind of supper at the brothel earlier, anyhow. “Some of us like our meat with flavor.”


	4. Strange Bedfellows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has sex in it. Be ye warned.

They rode on in silence for an hour more, then made camp a little ways off the main road. Sebastian rubbed down the horses, tied them up for the night, and walked the perimeter to get a good idea of the space, pissing on a few trees and rubbing his back against others just to get his scent on them. When he returned, James had proven himself useful enough to get a small fire going.

Sebastian laughed when he saw where the unicorn had laid down his blanket and saddlebags to sleep on — a good twenty feet or so away from Sebastian’s, on the other side of the fire. Did he honestly think Sebastian had forgotten he intended to fuck him? Or maybe he thought his exceptionally sweet demeanor of frigid silence was going to change Sebastian’s mind?

“Do you really want to stumble all the way back over there after I fuck you?” he asked. To be honest, this particular unicorn was an especially proud one — he wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

James eyed him warily. “We should wait to do this until morning,” he hedged crisply.

“No. Drag your pallet over here and get your clothes off.”

“Fine.” The unicorn complied in silence, relocating his things and peeling his clothes off with malice burning in those bottomless black eyes.

Sebastian let himself admire the view for a few moments, sizing up his new prize. James seated himself on Sebastian’s pallet, leaning back on his hands and looking summarily annoyed about the whole business — he really was an uppity little thing. His skin was smooth and taut, though, very pretty, and it shone like cold milk in the firelight. His cock lay nestled on the bed of dark hair between his legs, rosy pink like his nipples were, and Sebastian was amused to see that it wasn’t completely flaccid. James wasn’t quite the cool customer he pretended to be.

Sebastian began the longer process of taking off his own clothes, which involved considerably more buttons and buckles than the simple items James wore. He deposited them in a pile next to his saddle, and when he was done, he toed James over onto his stomach on his own pallet, pushing with his bare foot until the unicorn allowed himself to be flipped face-down.

“Hands and knees,” he said, and the unicorn went silently to it.

The forest suddenly seemed very quiet, and Sebastian was aware of how naked he was and how little James had spoken to him thus far. He’d tried, a few times, to start some kind of conversation, but each time, James had looked straight ahead and lied blithely, which had the dual effects of ending their chats quickly and pissing Sebastian off.

James didn’t move, tense and dead still, but there was a soft exhale, and Sebastian realized he’d been holding his breath. “Does it matter at all that I don’t want to bed you?” James asked.

There was something absurdly delicate about his phrasing, _bed you_.

Sebastian wasn’t in the habit of taking unwilling bedmates. He’d rarely had to think about it, actually — the late king had kept him well-supplied with whores for his enjoyment, and there were always those people who liked an aggressive lover who would take them like dogs, who occasionally sought him out for an exotic adventure. _Let’s fuck the big tiger. How many opportunities do you get to say you tried it? Careful, he might kill you_.

“Worried I’ll lose control and snap your neck?” he asked, tracing the unicorn’s spine curiously with his fingers. His skin was so much warmer than Sebastian expected.

“No,” he said, and Sebastian could tell by the way he said it that the suggestion had offended him. He really was the proudest little shit Sebastian had ever met. Odd from a unicorn. “I just don’t want to bed you. It has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a blood-thirsty, sub-human ogre.”

Sebastian snarled. He grabbed James by the hair and yanked his head up to growl in his face, teeth bared. “Is that what you think?”

James laughed, heedless of the hand in his hair or the man he’d just called bloodthirsty ready to rip him to pieces. “It’s what I _know_. Prove me wrong.”

“I’ll prove you _right_ , you insignificant cunt.” Sebastian shoved his face down into the blankets. James tried to put his arms down to catch himself, but Sebastian held him there, tempted to smash his face into the ground until his pretty nose broke. He jammed two fingers up into the smaller man, who immediately went dead stiff beneath him, every muscle rigid. “I was going to be nice to you,” he said, forcing his hand in and out of an unyielding body. He could see James’s fingers spasming against the blanket in pain. His every animal instinct said _fuck it kill it hurt it make the lesser creature **submit** make it cry_. “I didn’t want to hurt you. But you just had to go and be — so — fucking — superior. Is this how you want it?”

“No,” the unicorn choked.

Sebastian took his hand away and released him with a final shove of James’s face into the ground. “I thought as much.”

He moved away to the other pallet, catching his breath and waiting for his temper to cool. _You see?_ he thought, trying to get his more violent urges under control. _Not a blood-thirsty ogre_.

Sebastian was used to that. No one in his life had ever treated him otherwise: not his parents, who had abandoned their wild, uncontrollable, tempermental child; not the people who’d thrown him into service as a guard dog while other teenagers were learning proper trades; not the ones who’d wanted to have him slaughtered when he got too old and too big to be reliably controlled; not even the king himself, who’d taken him on as his personal hunter mainly because he liked having such an exotic, dangerous pet.

Next to him, James had lain down on his side, back to Sebastian, and was now rubbing his forehead with his hands. He shivered, even though he was closer to the fire than Sebastian was.

After a few minutes, he felt in enough control of himself to continue. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m not like they say.”

“Alright,” James granted, though he obviously didn’t believe him. Sebastian supposed he had to admit that that was fair.

“I served the late king for fourteen years,” he said. “I’m . . . tame.”

James answered with a murky noise that might’ve been a sigh, or a laugh, or a snort, or just a loud exhale. Difficult to tell. “My condolences,” he said, wry — but even though the sarcasm would’ve been in keeping with the unicorn’s general demeanor, still Sebastian got the feeling, somehow, that James wasn’t talking about the late king.

“Let’s try this again. This time, try to behave yourself.”

Sebastian could almost hear the eyeroll, though he couldn’t see it. But the unicorn picked himself up again resolutely, back on all fours.

Sebastian got behind him and spat into his hand, once, and then again. He rolled the damp saliva over his fingers.

“Don’t expect me to thank you for the considerate rape,” James warned him — but there was a softness in his shoulders that said he was relieved, if not grateful.

Sebastian tried to ignore how good the unicorn was at saying exactly the right thing to get on his nerves. “Anything else you’d like to say?”

“How many people like me — unicorn-blooded — did you hunt before me?”

“Twelve.”

“And none got away?”

“None.”

“Then no.”

This time, the unicorn submitted to being prepared with silent resoluteness. Sebastian could feel him forcing himself to relax around his fingers, breath slow and steady. He was hot inside, and tight, and getting his body to give Sebastian extra room when he spread his fingers was a slow process. James, he decided, was built for being fucked, for making a man feel good. It was how he imagined all unicorns were.

James had let his neck go limp, dropping his head in a posture that Sebastian couldn’t help but recognize as _submission_. When Sebastian finally worked him up to three fingers, he tilted his hips to try and find a more comfortable angle for himself, obviously having difficulty making the adjustment. Little wonder, Sebastian thought: he was so goddamned small. So delicate.

It took a while, but eventually, James started shifting his hips backward into Sebastian’s movements, and Sebastian withdrew his fingers. It was just a minute change, almost nothing at all, but even so, Sebastian had to hope it meant he was reconsidering things after he’d had time to cool his temper and could see that Sebastian was offering him a decent bargain. Was fucking Sebastian really such a sour prospect? Sebastian knew he cut an attractive figure, all hard-hewn muscle from a lifetime of work and dangerous grace from a lifetime of fighting, with bright, strawberry-golden hair and sharp eyes — and James, well. He had a slender frame that shimmered under the moonlight, and eyes that could look right through you like you were nothing but dust motes, eyes that looked sad and innocent even while he told you what a worthless creature you were. James was plain beautiful. James made you want to look at him, even when you were supposed to be looking at the road ahead, or gathering firewood, or feeding and watering the horses. James made you want to never look away, sure that nothing else in the world could be as lovely or as interesting. 

Sebastian spat into his hand again, this time sliding his wet palm over himself. His cock was already more than hard enough to go about its business, and the spit in his hand mingled with a few drops of pre-come that had already leaked impatiently free of his body. “You’re so pretty,” he said, trying to maintain a sort of polite sanity. “So pretty waiting for me.” The head of his cock nudged at James’s entrance. James said nothing.

He pushed in with slow care, making sure not to cause any needless damage, but it wasn't easy. Sebastian had always known he was more animal than man, and nothing brought out his baser instincts like fucking. The little unicorn under him was cramped and amazing around his cock, and making little squirming motions to try and fit him that made Sebastian overwhelmingly want to slam into him straight to his center. It was exquisitely good. He made it about halfway at a steady, controlled pace like that before his will gave out in favor of his need, and he shoved the rest of the way forward until he was in to the hilt, his hips flush with James's soft backside. James let out a harsh cry and shivered. Sebastian had to assume this was unfortunately not positive feedback.

Sebastian thought James would ask him to wait before continuing, obviously in a bit of pain and discomfort, so Sebastian held himself there precariously, trying to remember that, despite what other people thought, he was a man and not just a snarling beast. James still said nothing, though, just arched his back uneasily and took shallow breaths. Sebastian wasn’t sure he’d get any sort of signal from James to know when he was comfortable.

“Easy,” Sebastian soothed, feeling impatient to move. “Relax. Don’t be afraid — I’ll make you feel good.” Meanwhile, the tiger-blooded urge to bite down on the lovely little unicorn’s moon-white throat and fuck him till he cried was incredibly powerful — it was making it very hard for Sebastian to keep hold of his rational mind.

 _Don’t be afraid_ had apparently struck ill, though: James hissed in obvious, wordless objection to the accusation that he was _frightened_ , and his muscles tensed from his shoulders outward, squeezing Sebastian torturously before James forced himself to relax again. “It’s fine,” the unicorn intoned in a flat, surly little voice. “It’s hardly anything. You can move.” He wiggled his hips as if daring Sebastian to.

Sebastian might’ve been more insulted by ‘hardly anything’ if he wasn’t currently hilt-deep in the fussy little unicorn, who was bent over and at his mercy. As it was, he found James’s reaction, the first feedback he’d given, more amusing than annoying — James really was full of an absurd amount of bravado for such a useless, arrogant prig. It was a tiny bit charming, in a way — not least because Sebastian knew how that reaction would get under James’s skin. “We’ll see about ‘hardly anything’,” he chuckled near James’s ear, pulling most of the way out. Sebastian thrust back in again, starting up a cycle of movement for them, loving how hard James’s muscles squeezed his cock whenever he did anything. It felt spectacular, and Sebastian started pumping the unicorn’s tight little body in a heated rhythm that was all dominance and self-fulfillment. It never took very long for his baser hindbrain to come to the fore. “I’ll bet you love taking big ones like this, don’t you? Have you ever fucked a tiger-blood before?”

The unicorn seemed more comfortable with moving than he had been with staying still; it didn’t take long at all for him to start swaying into Sebastian’s movements, just the tiniest bit. Sebastian grinned: James was feeling it, alright. Now there was something he could work with. Finally. Sebastian wrapped a hand around the slim torso beneath him to get better leverage for himself. “No,” James answered him after a few seconds, just before Sebastian was about to give up on a response. His voice was breathy and agitated, not quite himself — it stirred up hot swirls of lust in Sebastian’s gut like nothing else. “Usually they keep the cats and dogs locked in the kennels.” He leaned in a little more, possibly liking the new angle with Sebastian’s arm around his midsection. Sebastian couldn’t prove that, of course. He just suspected it was the case.

Undaunted by more of James’s insults — which were practically perfunctory, apparently — Sebastian gave him a rough squeeze around his ribs and a few especially sharp thrusts. “I’ll bet they did,” he agreed confidently, rather than taking umbrage. “Didn’t want us ruining you pretty little sweethearts for their tiny, useless pricks once you’d been properly stuffed.”

When the hard thrusts returned to the easier fucking they’d been doing before, James let out a very quiet, needy whimper, startling Sebastian with the change in his demeanor. Previously, all his reactions had been subtle and passive, assiduously controlled: fractional movements and indistinct noises Sebastian couldn’t make anything of. Now his hips were moving in time with Sebastian’s, trying to get back to the frantic beats of a moment before, and he was making soft, slightly urgent sounds. He was actively letting Sebastian know that he wanted something. Sebastian, as it happened, wanted that same thing, but he didn’t oblige him right away. He was too intrigued at the way things were developing. “There something wrong, unicorn?” he asked, slowing just a little. He was fairly certain he knew now _exactly_ what was wrong. The unicorn liked it a certain way and he wasn’t getting it.

James shook his head mutely.

“Something you need?” he purred in the unicorn’s ear. James still remained silent. Sebastian had to wonder just how stubborn he _was_. They both wanted the same thing. Why not just ask for it? The unicorn could go back to sulking about the unfairness of the world tomorrow.

“Tell me,” he tried again, to no avail. James shoved greedily down on Sebastian’s cock and made a few desperate noises, but he wouldn’t say a damned word. When Sebastian slowed almost to stillness, James just readjusted his weight onto one hand so he could reach the other one up to touch himself, and Sebastian had to grab him by the wrist to stop him.

Sebastian shook his head. “You’d rather slit your own throat than admit you want it, wouldn’t you? Don’t worry, unicorn, that’s alright. I already know what you need.”

The truth was, he didn’t actually _know_ , exactly. He had a general idea of it, of course, but that was all. Unicorn mating was something he only knew a few vague details about, and none of those details happened to concern how unicorns liked to be arsefucked. Unicorns were _horses_ , though, in a lot of the fundamental ways, and while Sebastian was far from a horse breeder, he’d seen his stallion, Bloodbath, mounting a mare in heat a few times. He could at least draw from what he remembered about that awkward sight: sniffing, nipping, nickering, and finally they both agreed to do business with each other, which had been a rough, feral process. Sebastian imagined James’s equine instincts were at least similar.

The tiger-blooded urges Sebastian had weren’t all that different. There were a few logistical nuances here and there that James might find — surprising — but Sebastian had gotten as many compliments as he had complaints about _that_ , and there wasn’t a great deal one could do about one’s anatomy regardless.

Sebastian reached forward and placed James’s hand very deliberately back on the pallet beneath them. “You don’t touch yourself,” he said firmly. “I touch you.” James groaned indignantly, but he didn’t try again.

The first few times Sebastian bit the back of James’s neck, he was teasing, leaving playful nips designed to annoy and to garner attention rather than to actually try to catch and hold him. James clearly liked that, though, and stretched his shoulders down and his chin up to try and give Sebastian a longer line of bare throat to reach. Sebastian smiled, licked a few of the spots he’d bitten in long, wide strokes.

“You sweet little cunt. You want to be fucked like a horse, don’t you? Can’t help what’s in your blood.” Sebastian reached one hand up to grab the unicorn by the front of his neck.

He caught a thick furrow of skin between his teeth a moment later and bit down, _hard_ , hanging on and pinning James with it this time. His unicorn let out a throaty, shameless moan at that, digging his fingers into the pallet. That kind of noise did things to Sebastian that he couldn’t describe.

Because he was a tiger and not a horse, Sebastian’s sharper canine teeth broke the skin and sank into the unicorn’s flesh rather than just holding on — Sebastian had enough time to catch James’s faint, surprised gasp before the bright tang of blood hit his mouth and he realized very abruptly what was on his tongue.

Eating a unicorn-blood was generally considered to be a form of cannibalism, and was widely frowned upon in most circles, but it was commonly known that there was no part of a unicorn-blooded man or woman that wasn’t extraordinarily good for you, and many a foolish unicorn had met their fate that way despite the taboo. Their tears, their saliva — any liquid you could draw from them had the power to heal, to youthen, to _give life_ , which was why people kept them around to be fucked. Blood, though. Blood was the purest and fastest-acting. The blood in Sebastian’s mouth sent a wave of pure, white ecstasy through him, and a sharp hunger for _more all more eat feel more hungry rip devour want need mine_. He laid into James’s small, perfect body with furious abandon, fucking him savagely when he’d meant to be kinder, driving in deeper and harder when James starting squirming in fear at the blood rolling down his shoulder.

The desire to tear out the unicorn-blood’s throat with his teeth and drink him blood-dry was terrible, grotesque, and nearly all-consuming; Sebastian was tiger-blooded and had violence and hunger in him from birth, and James was the world’s rarest, most delicious and satisfying prey. The two of them were practically a genetic impossibility for fucking. It took everything in him to draw his mouth off of James’s meaty skin and settle his chin bluntly over the unicorn’s shoulder instead, focusing on the fucking and James’s wriggling and his tight hole, and not the smell of blood and food and the incredible energy that unicorn blood sent straight through his veins. James was grunting desperately underneath him, bucking his hips in time with Sebastian’s like he couldn’t stop. He fixed his mind on that.

Sebastian was mostly mindless with fucking when he realized that James’s noises had turned into words. He had to struggle to pay attention to what James was saying and not the feeling of owning, filling, _possessing_ the creature underneath him over and over, but eventually he strung the words together: “What is that?,” James was asking.

It took him a few moments to make sense of this vague question and figure out what James meant. The soft spines must have flared up on the head of his cock when he’d started really slamming into James in earnest. The sensation of hundreds of rough little nibs dragging along his insides and sharply teasing all his nerve endings must’ve been surprising for him if he’d never been fucked by anything feline-blooded before. Sebastian was used to lovers who at least knew about it in advance.

“Tigers are different,” he said, which wasn’t a fantastic answer, but was about as many words as Sebastian could put together at this moment.

James didn’t ask further, mercifully. What he said instead was, “I thought you were going to _touch me_ ,” and he sounded so incredibly distressed about it that Sebastian nearly came at the sound, at all the need in his voice.

James’s cock was hard beneath Sebastian’s fingers, the head wet and dripping. He tested it with a few firm strokes and felt the unicorn’s whole body tremble under him. He was close; they both were.

Sebastian set up an aggressive rhythm, pumping James’s cock with his fist in time with the way he was thrusting into him, owning James’s pleasure at both ends. James whimpered beautifully, rocking hopelessly between Sabastian’s cock and his hand, steadied by Sebastian’s other hand pinning him by the throat. “You like the way I’m fucking you, don’t you?” he growled in James’s ear. “Big tiger filling you right up, using you just like you need. You’re such a sweet little cunt.”

It didn’t take too much longer before the unicorn came, his pale body crumpling up into spasms. The way his body seized up tight suddenly around Sebastian’s cock while he was pushing into him was all too perfect -- that sent Sebastian over the edge too. He spent himself, filling James up with his come in hot spurts as Sebastian held them both pinned deep together. James went down to his elbows, gasping for breath. He took Sebastian with him.

James had mostly come on the pallet beneath them, because Sebastian had forgotten to catch it, nearly ruining the whole point of all this — but there was still some that had rolled over the tops of Sebastian’s fingers, and the blood, while unintended, had probably been plenty anyway. He brought his fingers up to his mouth and licked his knuckles clean, letting the last of that magical feeling of healing and life wash over him in sweet waves as he came down from his orgasm.

You didn’t need to come inside a unicorn-blood to get the effects of its magic, you just needed to make it come for you. Sebastian knew that, _everybody_ knew that. But good God, Sebastian thought — you’d have to be a fool to do it any other way.

Sebastian pulled out and moved over to his own pallet to stretch himself out, feeling as incredible as he’d ever felt in his life. James collapsed onto his bedroll, looking exhausted, and pulled a blanket up over himself. Sebastian could see him curl up into a little ball beneath it, and it wasn’t long before his breathing evened out, and Sebastian could tell he was asleep. They could talk about this in the morning, Sebastian supposed. The unicorn had earned his rest.

Sebastian wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep yet. His mind and his body were still humming with pleasure, and he was feeling better than he had in ages. He licked at his fingers again, idly, trying to get any last taste of James’s come off of them, then just smelled them for a while, which was nice. They smelled like James. He was sweet and pretty, and now he smelled like Sebastian. He had Sebastian all over him and lingering inside him. Also nice.

Sebastian got up and put on some clothes, then checked on the horses briefly. They were a little restless, maybe from all the noise and the smell of blood and sex, but they calmed eventually and settled down for the night. Sebastian fed a few sticks to the fire, then he went back to his own pallet and laid back down to get some rest himself.

A few stars glimmered in the sky overhead, visible through the overhead foliage. Next to Sebastian, the unicorn-blooded runaway that he was planning on presenting to the prince was softly breathing.


	5. Twelve

When James woke, the remains of the fire had been cleaned up, one of the horses was already saddled, and Sebastian was sitting just a few feet away, staring at him. He was fully dressed and wide awake, and he looked like absolute hell. _Oh, right._ James stifled a laugh and gave his stupid traveling companion a bright smile. “Good morning,” he offered.

Sebastian didn’t return the greeting. He just stared at him, gray eyes glowering.

James’s sense of delight at how obviously pissed off Sebastian was was nearly enough to offset the various aches and stings he felt when he sat up, so he let himself revel in it awhile, regardless of the tiger’s damned moodiness. He could whine all he wanted — James was the one covered with bruises, with a sharp stinging in the place between his neck and shoulder where Sebastian had nearly tried to bite him clean through, while Sebastian was the one with no crick in his back and no bent thumb and whatever the hell else he’d pretended was good enough reason to fuck someone who’d made it clear they didn’t want to. “Did I sleep long?” he asked innocently, looking up at Sebastian with big, gamine eyes.

It took a few seconds for Sebastian to catch his expression, caught up in staring at the bruises dusting James’s hips and torso and throat, at the blood smeared and dried messily over him, starting to crack. Staring at _his handiwork_ , James noted. Then Sebastian looked up and saw his face, his cat-that-ate-the-canary expression, and that was what tipped him over the edge. “About seven hours,” he snapped out.

“Oh,” James said calmly, stretching. He tried to ignore his body’s copious complaints about the activity, pushing to his feet as though being naked, disgusting, and in pain didn’t bother him in the slightest.

“Do you know how many hours I slept?” Sebastian asked, his voice a snarl.

“How many?”

“ _None_ ,” he growled furiously, and shot to his feet so he could hover directly over James’s personal space, making full use of his towering height to try and intimidate him. Such a typical beast that way, going straight for his alpha male instincts.

“Oh,” James said again, as though this were the most unimportant news in the world.

“ _Oh?_ ” Sebastian repeated back indignantly, looking like he was about to snap James’s neck.

“Well, I _did_ warn you,” James shrugged reasonably.

Sebastian grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. Pain went through James’s torn shoulder. He tried not to show it. “You call that a warning?”

“Hmm. Yes.”

“You _unfathomable bitch_ ,” Sebastian shoved him away. “You snide, uppity whore. You knew I had no idea, you couldn’t have just said, ‘it’ll give you so much energy you won’t be able to sleep’? You couldn’t do that?”

James caught his balance and went to fetch clothes from his saddlebag so he could wash up and dress.

_Anything else you’d like to say?_

_How many people like me — unicorn-blooded — did you hunt before me?_

_Twelve._

_And none got away?_

_None._

_Then no._

“You were already planning on fucking me,” James said, pulling a clean tunic out. “And I’d already decided to make the most of it. So I thought it might amuse me to watch you fuck yourself, as well.” He looked up, chuckled a little. “I was right. It did.”

Sebastian had him by the throat before he could blink, and pushed him backward until he was up against a tree. He bared his teeth and _roared_ into James’s face, a noise which James observed detachedly that he wasn’t physically capable of replicating. Tiger-bloods had such _useful_ quirks, didn’t they. Textured penises and the ability to generate large sounds. No wonder they were in such high demand.

James stared back at him unblinking.

“You’ll regret being such a little shit,” Sebastian told him. “I don’t like being fucked with.”

 _Neither do I_ , James thought — but he stayed silent until the tiger let him go. He could smell Sebastian now that yesterday’s tonic had started to wear off, all sharp and feline. It was only faint — it would be several hours yet before it would’ve worn off enough for him to smell anything more than a few feet away and have to dose himself again — but the scent was there. Aggressive, male, hungry. Maybe still remembering the recent taste of blood. Tiger-bloods were said to have a persistent need to kill.

When James was free again, he rubbed at his throat, trying to soothe it. James was the one who’d had to sleep on a damp patch of his own come all night. James was the one who had to try and sit a horse all day after a night of being fucked like a tavern whore. Sebastian was a little tired, was he? Fuck him.

“Wash the blood off,” Sebastian called after him, “but that’s it. Leave my scent on you until I’m sure no dogs are tracking us.”

James bristled, but he mostly did as he was told, gingerly swabbing the blood off at the creek, taking a piss and washing some of the funk from between his legs. He dressed himself and grabbed a few berries haphazardly off of some bushes on his way back, stopping once or twice when he noticed some _very_ useful plants growing and snapped off sprigs to stuff into his pockets. Maybe he should rub some poison ivy in Sebastian’s clothes.

When he got back, Sebastian had resaddled Auriga and was waiting for him. “Hungry?” Sebastian asked dryly.

“I ate some berries along the way, thank you,” James waved him off. He held out a sprig of berries to him. “Would you like some?”

Sebastian slapped his hands away. “Those are _poisonous,_ you scheming, fucking snake.”

James gasped, eyes wide. “Oh, _are they_?”

Sebastian practically threw him onto the horse.


	6. Two by Two

The road through the forest always opened up wider at a crossroads, but it was well-trammeled all in all; it never narrowed so tightly that their horses couldn’t walk two abreast. Sebastian insisted on that. If James tried to press ahead, Sebastian sped up; if he tried to hang back, Sebastian slowed. The hunter never let Auriga’s reins out of easy reach.

They rode in silence for most of the morning. Sebastian looked miserable and exhausted, and James could hardly move without being in some kind of pain, so they didn’t have much to say to each other. That was fine. Aside from the atmosphere of rank hatred between them, it made for rather peaceful traveling.

“You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” Sebastian finally spoke up, when the sun was at about ten.

Ha. James knew full well that he hadn’t told Sebastian where they — where _he_ was going. He didn’t intend to. “South,” he said with sharp obviousness.

“Thank you, yes, I can _see_ we’re going south.” Sebastian scowled, slouching in his saddle. “This isn’t going to work if you won’t tell me where we’re going. We shouldn’t stick to a single open road, and I can’t plan anything else like this. I need you to tell me where, not just _south_.”

James stroked Auriga’s neck idly. The last thing he planned on doing was naming a destination for his companion. If Sebastian had an excuse to choose an alternate route, then he had an excuse to ride James straight into any trap he wanted. James didn’t plan on giving him that option. “Then it’s too bad you can’t just fuck it out of me every time you need something, isn’t it?”

“Oh, go to hell,” Sebastian barked back.

“ _No. South_.”

* * * *

James had never been this far south. He knew the land the land only by the maps he’d studied — and though he’d pored over them assiduously, committing whatever he could to memory, thus far they’d proven that they could be hellishly inaccurate. He’d expected the inevitable outdatedness — the _Prince’s goddamned woods_ that had not previously belonged to any member of the royal family had been a particularly unfortunate consequence, for example — but in some places, the maps were simply _wrong_ wholecloth. Roads were drawn in where there were none; others passed through towns that were miles off, or that didn’t really qualify as ‘towns;’ in one place, they’d put a nonexistent fork in the river and had it go two different directions past two different towns _simply because they couldn’t decide which was correct_. It was testament to how badly relations had broken down between countries, and how long ago, that the people from James’s country knew so extraordinarily little about this one.

He redrafted his mental maps as they went, mentally assigning names to new roads that didn’t have them — _Pissditch Road_ , _Sebastian Smells Like Cow Dung Road_ , _Now I Probably Smell Like Cow Dung Too Road_ , _Someone Changed Their Mind Road_ , and _Poor Rural Planning Road_ , for a few — and kept his eye on Sebastian for any signs he was up to anything fishy. In between these, he studied the landscape to see what he could learn about the weather here, and the people who lived in this area. He charted out their projected travel course for the rest of the trip. He estimated his remaining supply of tonics and make-up and dyes. He did computations in his head.

When Sebastian finally broke the silence again, out of nowhere, it was very far from anything James had been expecting. It was:

“Do you actually dye your cock hair?”

James rolled his eyes. “Oh, _nothing_ escapes _you_.”

“I was just thinking you should’ve had a cute little white bush. Then I remembered it was black.”

“Yes. Congratulations. You’re so clever.”

“What was the point? It’s not as though anyone sees it outside of fucking, and you could hardly do _that_ without being caught either.”

Oh, huzzah, James’s favorite part of the day. Speculate About Unicorn-Bloods Hour. Was it that time already? The hours did so tend to fly by.

“Is this really what you’ve been spending all this time thinking about? My _bush_? You’ve just sat there all this time, looking at the road and the trees, listening to bird calls, thinking, ‘I really really wonder about James’s cock hair’?”

“No,” the tiger-blood shrugged, looking him up and down. “But it was in the general vicinity.”

* * * *

They stopped for a rest and to relieve themselves at the bottom of a small ravine that sloped downward from the road toward the river, making use of a campsite that, it seemed, other travelers had frequented before them. It was good to take a break. They were both a bit worn down.

James stretched a bit when he was down from his horse, ignoring his lingering pains. They didn’t matter. It was best not to dwell on them. He checked his saddlebags next, to see that none of his flasks and bottles had broken. It was an occasional risk, though rarely with such smooth travel as this was — but it was good to check. They were fine.

By the time he turned back, Sebastian had completely disappeared, silent as ever. James was left with just the two horses. His guard immediately went up, cycling through possibilities. Sebastian was up to something, Sebastian wasn’t up to something — think through what he’d be up to. James scanned the riverbank and the clearing for information. What fit? Bent grass said he’d gone off between those trees, there, and he’d done it silently and quickly. Why? Hunting, or defending?

James peeked into Sebastian’s saddlebags to see what was and wasn’t there. It was a good time to snoop a little, anyway. Some of his hunting gear seemed to be gone — but all of his lures were still there, and his stoppered jars of various kinds that James identified as being animal scents — deer piss, and the like. Still, signs pointed to hunting. Fine, then. He could do what he wanted. James would continue investigating his things.

The second saddlebag had his personal effects in it: a few books, _interesting_ , and some papers, folded up, and a few changes of clothes — some clean, some dirty. A canteen. Some money. Treats for his horse.

James had barely started rifling through it when a soft twig-snap noise caught his attention and he had to put it all back and return to what he’d been doing. Ostensibly this was ‘checking on Auriga.’ 

Sebastian turned out to have been hunting, as James had assumed. He must’ve caught wind of something and chased after it, because he returned a few seconds later with some kind of large, dead marmot in hand whose body was hanging at a different angle than its head. And he’d . . . brought it back. To camp. To where James was.

James stared at it.

“Sebastian...,” he said, his voice low. But Sebastian looked up at him, right in his eyes, and James could tell he hadn’t _forgotten_ , he didn’t need _reminding_. No, Sebastian was obviously going to do this on purpose.

The tiger-blood lifted up the dead marmot with both hands and bit straight into it, tearing a large chunk off between his teeth. He stared right at James the entire time.

James tried, to be fair to himself. He really did try. For a few long seconds, he stared back, and swallowed, and did his very, very best not to breathe, not to trigger his blood allergy. Not to smell. Not to gag. It was no use, though — the scent got into his lungs anyway, _blood_ , and his stomach gave an immediate and violent lurch in reaction. He cupped a hand up over his mouth and nose, trying to choke back a rush of bile, reeling.

He stepped backwards into Auriga’s midsection, animal instinct overriding rational behavior. The blessedly calm gelding did his best to catch him, sidling only a little to regain his footing, putting up no protest when James caught himself by the hair in the horse’s mane. James was going to be sick. No question.

“I see you’ve got your sense of smell back,” Sebastian commented, mouth half-full and dribbling red.

James didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Instead, he sprinted down the riverbank as far as he could get before he knew he was going to be violently ill, pitched forward onto his knees, and threw up the contents of his stomach into the rushing water.

So this was Sebastian’s revenge scheme, then. Using James’s blood allergy against him.

 _Fine,_ he thought, feeling the bile scraping his throat raw as he retched repeatedly. _Fine, then._


	7. Poison

No blood had touched his skin or come near him. James was mostly recovered after about ten minutes, though he stayed kneeling at the waterside for longer, resting. He felt a bit worn down and weakened from having vomited repeatedly, but that was all, and he didn’t ask for help when Sebastian — who’d washed himself off and changed his tunic — came to meet him with the horses. He picked himself up again, wrenched his weight up into the saddle, and slouched morosely in his seat as Sebastian led the horses through the grass and back up the embankment to the main road.

Sebastian had gorged himself on his damned marmot, and aside the bags under his eyes, he looked reasonably energetic and satisfied as he mounted up. James expected he was going to have to fend for himself when his stomach settled again and remembered that it was empty — and he was going to have to plan further ahead if Sebastian intended on pulling this little stunt again.

Unfortunately, the best option would be to take his tonic more often, which was something James was trying to avoid. He only had so much of it, and until he figured out a way to rebuild his supplies of ingredients and a new source of income now that a meddlesome tiger-blood had ruined his last venture, he had to make the remainder of his tonic last him as long as possible. A week, he’d decided — that was as long as he could stretch what he had, and that was only relying on Sebastian’s unhindered senses to be able to sniff out problems before they came within James’s range, so they could avoid them. That was its own task, of course, but manageable. The tiger-blood should, he expected, have an excellent sense of smell. Even with all this, though, a week was being optimistic — he strongly suspected the tonic would start to break down after five days, at most, and lose its potency. Six, if he had a way of keeping it cool — but that was unlikely, since they were traveling on horseback. Five days. 

Three days if the heat climbed at all.

Make-up to cover the tattoo on his forehead, and dye for his hair, were less problematic: they’d last him a good while, and he’d been growing out his hair to help hide the white ink tattoo, so he had a bit more leeway on those. No, the tonic was the problem to focus on.

He turned that problem over in his head for a while, flipping through scenarios to see what sort of a plan he wanted to move forward with. He generally tried to favor the option that _didn’t_ involve keeping Sebastian around — reasons obvious — but unfortunately, the man who’d been his greatest setback was also, presently, one of his greatest advantages.

James would keep thinking. Something would occur to him. It always did.

When he got hungry enough to want to eat again, James picked up Auriga’s reins and steered him over toward a bush that was heavily laden with berries. Sebastian started, surprised and annoyed that James had broken course without any warning, and led Bloodbath — _Bloodbath!_ really! — after him.

“Whoa,” he said, grabbing Auriga’s reins away just as James was reaching in to grab a handful of fruit. “You’re right in the middle of the road, and that bush is _untouched_ by passersby. Even a house pet like you should be able to work out that it’s poisonous.”

James shook his head, tugging the reins the other way. Auriga looked fretful at being yanked about. “Only one thing in the world is poisonous to the unicorn-blooded, _Sebastian_ ,” he said pointedly. “But I’ll make a note of your staggering concern for my health and well-being.”

With a great deal of deliberacy, James plucked Sebastian's fingers off of Auriga's reins, and led the poor, confused animal back to what he'd been doing. He bent a long branch off of the bush, and settled it in his lap. There. Whatever impression Sebastian had of unicorn-bloods that made him think James _couldn't feed himself_ , he was perfectly mistaken. It was easy. He just avoided meat.

James was just finishing up his little repast when Sebastian caught scent of someone heading in their direction. "Monkey on the road," Sebastian grunted, his body already tensing up into a guarded posture.

'Monkey on the road' had been the single most amusing thing to happen to James all day. Sebastian, he'd learned, had a habit of referring to non-aspected people as though they were 'monkey-blooded,' rather than simply men and women. 'Monkeys stopped here,' he'd say. 'some chimp didn't have any idea what he was doing.' In that sense, at least, his brutish tiger-blooded nature proved entertaining. He didn’t seem to like or respect anyone at all, except for himself.

The non-aspected were a good thing, though. They weren’t likely to recognize James for what he was, not with their dull senses and slow wits. And so many of them were lazy, too, he’d discovered: if they weren’t born fox-blooded or raven-blooded, they didn’t try to use their brains at all; if not hawks or hounds, they allowed themselves to be terrible hunters; if not born strong, like bear-bloods or ox-bloods, they chose to stay weak. There were so few exceptions to that norm in the world, and so many confirmations of it. It was why people were so easily subjugated. So easily tricked.

"Single rider and his horse," Sebastian clarified. "Come up from the city."

James, not being in a position to take stupid risks, bit off a few last berries, and threw the rest of the branch off into the underbrush to his left. The last thing he needed was to be found out because he'd sat around blithely eating poisonous fruit. Even a comfortable city mouse might have come by the ability to recognize safe plants from bad somewhere, and have half a brain to make the connection. Staggeringly unlikely, but possible.

The man that came up the road was stout, sort of a small, square-looking man even astride a horse — he was perhaps close to forty, with plain, unpretentious clothing, and his hair was the color of gold that had long ago given up trying. He hailed them with a wave, as some of the friendlier travelers tended to do.

Sebastian lifted his arm in greeting, and James did the same. He kept his eye on the tiger-blood as much as the newcomer: if Sebastian was what James suspected he was, he’d need as much information as he could get.

“Ho there,” the stranger called out, riding in closer. James could smell him now, all wool and boiled leather and a bit of a musty, oaken scent, wrapped around the smell of _adult, human, male_. Monkey. There were a few small cages hanging from the back of his saddle, and James could see fluttering from within them as the rider approached. Nothing about the man said _hunter_ to James, though — no, the stiff way he sat a saddle, the hints of an old injury, the sort of weaponry he wore and the way he wore it, the way he greeted potential threats directly rather than sneaking around them, those things said _soldier_. A soldier who’d been taken from the field of battle, then, and was — what? Someone’s guardsman, perhaps, except that he was traveling alone, and with what seemed to be messenger pigeons. Someone’s trumped-up errand boy. 

Miserable fate for a warrior. Was everyone in this country so pathetically resigned to the roles they’d been given, that they just took whatever cards were dealt to them? _I served the late king for fourteen years,_ Sebastian had told him, expecting that James would’ve been afraid of tiger-blood savagery, of all things. _I’m tame._

Tame.

James would cut his own throat before he ever told anyone he was _tame_ and meant it.

Of all the things he hated about Sebastian Moran, and really, there were many — James hated the pathetic idea of a tiger-blood being _tame_ most of all.

“Afternoon,” Sebastian had returned the stranger’s greeting, and James nodded along with it. Sebastian had wanted to take the lead on interacting with strangers, and that was mostly fine. It left James plenty of time to observe.

There was a moment in which the two of them looked at each other, each sizing the other up, and then the soldier looked at James, too. He had an open, curious face, and he only stared at James for a moment before looking back to Sebastian, obviously trying to puzzle out their connection. That was the slightest bit interesting.

“Can you tell me,” the soldier said gingerly, “is this the road up to Tallow Hill? There’s meant to be a fork in the road, and I should’ve gained it by now, I think, but I haven’t seen anything.”

“You’re two miles off yet,” Sebastian answered, his voice lower and richer in quality than the soldier’s higher tenor. “Not to worry, you’ve not gone off-course.” There was something reserved and almost forcedly polite in his tone, something that indicated that, while these two men might not specifically know each other, the soldier seemed to at least recognize Sebastian, and Sebastian seemed to at least recognize that the stranger was a soldier of some kind. It was interesting that the unusual amount of genteel politeness he was showing was Sebastian’s instinctive response to that. James wondered if meeting a city soldier wasn’t bringing out all Sebastian’s tame housecat manners that he’d no doubt learned during his royal service. Someone was a bit self-conscious, apparently. 

“What brings you so far north?” Sebastian was asking.

James was pleased he’d asked it — always better to get information when you could, especially information about potential dangers. A man with a sword and with messenger pigeons was very much a potential danger.

The soldier sighed. A wan smile crossed his face, and he admitted, “A fool’s errand. No, I shouldn’t say that. A — a royal assignment, I suppose. The prince was having a fox hunt in his forest up that way, and it went off without a hitch, quite brilliantly, in fact, but — the prince — the, ah, other one, that is — felt that it must have gone a bit _too_ well, I suppose you could say, and he, errr, suspects foul play. So I’m sent to have a bit of a peek at the body of the fox-blood — err, whatever’s left of it — “ He looked at Sebastian uneasily, obviously aware that he was aspected. “ — to see if I can confirm there’s evidence she was poisoned before the hunt to give the prince an advantage, as he suspects.” He sighed again. Clearly he was all to used to being sent on errands, little though he liked it.

James stored the information away to turn over in his head. Any kind of investigation up that way spelled bad news for them, and worse news if poison turned out to be involved: James thought of his wagon, abandoned at the brothel, the word _APOTHECARY_ emblazoned all too starkly on the side.

God help the meddlesome ‘other’ prince if this turned out to be what put the hounds on their scent. James hadn’t had any plans of killing him, didn’t know the first thing about the fellow, but if he was going to making James’s life this difficult, and leave him with no choice but to keep the fucking tiger-blood he’d picked up around for longer, perhaps his death needed to be allotted for. James didn’t like people getting in his way.

“Well, best of luck to you,” Sebastian told him, hoping to keep the soldier moving on his way. He held out a hand. “Sebastian Moran.”

The soldier nodded, and reached forward — with an almost-masked note of surprise on his face that said ‘I’m shaking hands with a tiger-blood?’ quite clearly as far as James could tell — and shook Sebastian’s hand. “Jonathan Watson. To you as well.”

He reached for James’s hand next, so James smiled sympathetically, and they clasped hands. Completely smoothly, he said, “Rudyard Swain. Safe travels, Mr. Watson.”

“Yes,” he nodded to them both. “To you as well.”

He pulled his horse past them to leave, then turned back, remembering something. “Oh — there’s a completely ridiculous toll a few miles south, and I think they’re conducting searches just so they can rob people blind. I’ve said a few strong words to them, but — you might rather go around, if you can. Just a caution.”

“Thank you,” Sebastian inclined his head gratefully. “Our regards to Tallow Hill.”

“And mine where you’re headed.”

And that said, he went on his way — and the image of him from reverse, all wool and the fluttering of caged bird wings, gradually shrank, until at last they rounded a long curve in the road, and Jonathan Watson went out of sight.


	8. South

They didn’t get off the road. In fact, James hadn’t said anything at all since they’d parted ways with Jonathan Watson; he’d stared straight ahead, looking lost in thought, and steered his horse absently. “Let’s sidetrack to the east,” Sebastian had said, to no answer. “Unicorn. Oi, unicorn. James. We’re going east. Around.”

Whatever he tried, James just rode on, relentlessly southward. He ignored Sebastian.

Finally, when Sebastian had decided that the unicorn was off in some sort of faraway place in his head, he grabbed Auriga’s reins to _lead_ them both off to the left, to an easterly footpath into to the woods, where they could navigate around the toll that Watson had warned them about. _That_ got James’s attention.

“You claimed you were going to be _useful_ to me, Sebastian,” he cut in, trying to snatch the reins out of Sebastian’s hands. “How many times do I need to remind you, we’re going _south_?”

Sebastian pulled back, tugging the gelding’s head between them. The horse looked very unhappy about all the pulling and confusion. “You want to go _south_ , you want to _stay on the road_ — are you fucking daft?”

“Hardly. I expect you to uphold your end of our bargain, that’s all.”

“By . . . by what, getting us both caught?!”

“By _doing your job,_ tiger-blood. Good lord, you’re stupid.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Sebastian whipped the reins completely out of his hands this time, incensed. With his other hand, he grabbed the unicorn by his shirtfront. “Oh, _my job, is it?!_ Now listen here, you conniving little whore — I’ve just about reached my limit with your constant shit, do you understand me? Our _bargain_ was that I’d deliver you to wherever the fuck it is you’re going in safety, and in exchange I’d get to fuck you when I liked — _that_ was our bargain. And if that means we’re circling around a road toll to the _east_ so I can keep you safe, then we’re circling to the east, and if that means I want to shove you on your belly in the middle of the goddamned road and take you like the little bitch we both know you are, then _that’s_ what I’ll damn well do, and either way you’re going to shut up and take it, and I’ll still be able to say I’m a man of my word, because that was what we bargained. But I never once offered to ride down the damned road till I hit a toll and then slaughter everyone at it. I never offered to _work_ for you, unicorn. I don’t have a _job_ and I don't follow your orders.” What did James expect Sebastian was going to do, just ride straight down the main road with him, killing anyone they ran into along the way? Did he think that was the offer?

“Oh, tiger,” James said, looking at him eye-to-eye. There was something otherworldly in those eyes of his, sometimes. “You really just don’t listen.”

Sebastian stared back at him for a few long seconds, trying to puzzle him out -- but for all his normally-reliable instincts, he could glean nothing from that deep brown gaze. "Neither do you," Sebastian finally decided, grabbing James's horse by the bridle and pulling it. Forget the reins -- Sebastian had never met a horse he couldn't steer, with or without them.

The gelding hesitated — just a little, loyal to its rider — but Sebastian leaned down toward its face, bared his teeth, and growled at it, and then it came to heel.

“We’re going east down this road for a little while,” he told James sternly, like a parent instructing a child. “Leads off to . . . ,” he sniffed the air, trying to confirm his best guess from the faded remnants of old smells. He was no hound, though — didn’t have their gift for smelling things clear as crystal for days and days after — and nothing he could smell was more than a vague idea of what lay down the path. Still, he’d been a hunter for long enough to know a few things about the lay of the land, and roadwork and how it was laid out and maintained in the woods. “ . . . a hunting box.” Most likely. “Hopefully no one home just now, though, the smells are old and the grass has been growing in a while, so if there is, they’ve been there some weeks. That’d be a proper hunter.”

James looked at him for a moment, scrutinizing, then down at the path they were now moving down. “No,” he said, firmly. “No one’s there.”

He said this with such blank matter-of-factness that his confidence in the statement was obvious. Sebastian had to wonder what it was that motivated the unicorn to speak with such self-assurance — some sort of horse affinity that Sebastian didn’t possess, perhaps — because one half-glance at James was enough to make it very obvious that the man was no hunter, no tracker. He had _genteel_ and _city-bred_ writ large all over him.

“If that turns out to be true, we’ll rest there a few hours, maybe I’ll have you freshen me up, and then we’ll get on the road again, preferably after nightfall. And you’re going to tell me where we’re going. I’m assuming you’re in a hurry to get there, so you may as well.”

“Answering this over and over again is becoming exceedingly tiresome, Sebastian; as I said, we’re — ”

“ _Where_ we’re going. Not which way. You’re going to fucking tell me, you know.”

James’s eyebrows went up. “I’m not.”

“One way or another, I’ll make you tell me.”

“You can’t.”

“I can,” Sebastian promised.

James laughed. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. Not as you are now.”

Sebastian blinked. “And what am I now?”

James, it seemed, was intent on leaving him wondering. He said nothing, just looked off to the side and punctuated it with a flicker of his eyebrows again, as though sharing silent commentary with an invisible third party.

Sebastian hated feeling made a fool of.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he warned the unicorn, “when we get to the hunting box. After that, I’ll force you to tell me.”

“Hmmm,” James said, tilting his head to the side and twirling his lips up into a smile. “Yes, that sounds interesting. Let’s do that.” He looked at Sebastian with a face that was completely blank of fear, like Sebastian was completely toothless and making empty threats. Like there was nothing to be afraid of.

 _That doesn’t matter, though_ , Sebastian thought to himself. _You’re a unicorn. One more stupid, pathetic unicorn._

_Hem and haw all you want. I know your kind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, things get a little crazy. I hope you'll stick with me. <3


	9. Renegotiation

The hunting box turned out to be mostly disused -- weeds thronged the footpaths, making fearless inroads into the hard-packed dirt, and ivy had grown up over two sides of the building, almost reaching the second-floor window. They were both wary, dismounting from their horses, but Sebastian still didn't smell anyone. He was reasonably sure they were alone, for the time being.

They stabled the horses -- Sebastian caught flickers of James watching him from the corner of his eye -- and Sebastian carried their things, James's saddlebags slung over one shoulder, and his own on the other. The house wasn't hard to break into, but the owners seemed at least to have some expectation of that -- it was mostly empty of anything but large, difficult-to-move furniture, plus a few assorted items that would be no great loss to replace, if needed: a few cloth napkins, silverware and plates in the cupboard, sheets on the bed. Sebastian set their bags down near the hearth.

James and Sebastian spent a few long, tense moments staring at the bed in silence, side by side. 

As usual, Sebastian found himself wondering about the thoughts going on in the unicorn's enigmatic head. _That sounds interesting,_ he’d said. _Let’s do that._ What did he expect? Did he think Sebastian had already done his worst, and he was trying to call his bluff? Or was he up to something else?

Sebastian gave himself a mental shake. That was an almost laughably ridiculous thought. Unicorns were simple beasts, he reminded himself — they’d always been easy prey. James had more of an attitude than most, granted, but that didn’t mean he had more of a _brain_. Sebastian had known James for all of a day at this point, and that was far too soon to be second-guessing a decade’s-worth of personal experience.

They split lunch with an odd degree of civility, seated on opposite sides of the big, wooden table. Sebastian chewed his way through some of the dried meat he kept in his saddlebags, while James had foraged for his lunch in a small, weedy vegetable patch outside. Sebastian made an extra effort to eat neatly, remembering the way the color had gone out of James’s face and the far-off sound of him throwing up into the river. His point had been made, and at the time he’d felt vindicated — he’d _been_ vindicated. Still, as the day had worn on, it had been harder and harder for his unicorn-blooded companion to hide his grimace of discomfort in the saddle, since weakness and hunger and injuries from the night before were taking their toll on him, and Sebastian could tell that that blow to his dignity was a difficult one to bear. It made him a little sympathetic.

“Do you eat meat at all?” Sebastian asked him, thinking he could duck into the next town they passed and pick up food for the both of them. Tree branches and berries were likely not enough food to sustain a grown man, if the lean, wiry body he’d had underneath him last night was any indication.

As he sometimes did, James waited a few seconds before answering. During that time, he studied Sebastian carefully, those big, sharp brown eyes of his unnerving. Sebastian had the sense of being looked through. “I’ve eaten meat,” he eventually shrugged. The tone of his voice said, _I wasn’t that impressed._

It wasn’t quite an answer to his question, though, Sebastian noticed. 

Lots of things a man would do when he was starving. Lots of things a man would do with a knife to his ribs. Didn’t mean he did those things as a matter of course.

“Well, make a list of what you want and tell it to me, and I’ll see what I can come by in the next town we pass by.”

James nodded, mashing a leaf or something between his teeth. He didn't say thank you. Typical.

When they'd nearly finished their meal, such as it was, Sebastian turned to James again. "Unicorn," he said sternly, "you have to answer me this time. I need to know your destination."

James smiled and folded his hands on the table in front of himself. “Ah. And now at last we come to it,” he dodged.

“Tell me, or it’ll go badly for you.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I don’t want to make this any more difficult than it has to be. Don’t be obstinate.”

James barked out a laugh. “Oh, I see! Only as difficult as it has to be.” He sat forward, aggressively confrontational. “And how difficult is that, exactly, _Sebastian_? Me having to put up with your vulgar eating habits? Your painful attempts at conversation? Having to tolerate your crude, tiger-blooded rutting? Explain to me which of these are _necessities_ , if you please. So that I can understand how difficult it _has_ to be.”

Sebastian slammed his silverware down on the table and reached across to grab James by his shirtfront. “I don’t want to hurt you, you stupid cunt!” he growled, incensed. “I don’t want to fucking threaten you. Does that penetrate your dense goddamned horse skull? I’m _trying_ to get along with you!”

James shrugged, affecting ennui, but his eyes were sharp and angry. “No, you’re trying to _fuck_ me, you belligerent cretin. And I’d rather be fucked by my own mother than play at _courtly manners_ with garbage like you. Touch me again, and I’ll make sure you don’t get what you want.”

Sebastian pulled James across the table until they were almost nose-to-nose. He wanted to bite the stupid little cocksucker, tear off some of the skin until his face wasn’t so pretty, wasn’t so smug. That was his first instinct, the one he’d always indulged in the past. _Claw bite crush kill_.

But he couldn’t count on royal pardons for those kinds of things anymore. It was the whole reason he’d gone after the goddamned unicorn in the first place, after all. Things weren’t the same anymore with the king dead.

Instead he let go of James’s clothes, slid back in his chair, and stood up. James settled back, unruffled. “You really don’t think I can do it,” Sebastian said, the realization cementing itself in his head. “You think you’re the only one who has something the other one wants, do you?” He waited for an answer, though he didn’t really expect one. None came. “You arrogant little shit. That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” Sebastian told him.

James stood up as well, just as calm as you please. He began gathering the plate and silverware he’d used, and started carrying it over to the washbasin as though they were just having an idle conversation about boats or the weather. “Do your worst, if you can,” he said, not even looking back. “You know, we really should renegotiate our terms at some point — “

Sebastian shook his head. “After this,” he said, “I pray you’ll consider revising your attitude. I’ve no patience for being disrespected.” He unlatched one of his saddlebags where it was piled on the floor, and felt around inside for what he was looking for.

“Now, now. If that were true, tiger cub, you’d have been put down long before ever meeting me,” James decided — but when Sebastian looked back, he was watching, his head cocked just slightly to the side. Now he’d see. Now James would stop underestimating him so fatally.

Sebastian’s hand settled on a small, stoppered black gourd, which he pulled out of the saddlebag. “You want to be a raven so very badly,” Sebastian said, pushing back up to his feet. “Need to be awfully clever for that, you know. So tell me, then, _raven_ — as clever as you are — answer this one question. How would _you_ hunt a unicorn?”

James was looking at the jar in Sebastian’s hand. There was nothing obvious on his face, nothing but a certain stiffness that bespoke deep, hasty thought — but there was a flicker of fear in his eyes, just for a moment — the kind that came not from knowledge, but from pure instinct. The kind that said _there’s something wrong_.

Now James would see, Sebastian was thinking, even as he unstoppered the gourd. And then, a second later, the unicorn’s face, his entire body, froze dead still for a moment. He did see. He’d guessed.

Too late, though: the cork was already out, and Sebastian was dipping two fingers down into the neck of it. He’d done this before — this particular trick had served him a dozen times before without fail — but he still found it slightly disgusting. His hand came up red.

James took a step back, driven by the same futile instinct that had had him backing up into his horse when they’d eaten that morning, trying to get away from the smell of blood and pain and death that he was so allergic to. This was different, of course, was a different threat he was trying to escape from, but there was likewise no outrunning it. Sebastian watched as the unicorn’s lips curled back in something resembling an angry sneer: the telltale sign some animal-bloods had of breathing deeply to scent something, of drawing the smell up into their mouths. Tiger-bloods did it too, and without thinking about it, Sebastian had copied the unicorn-blood, so that it looked like they were hissing at each other. The difference between them was that this particular smell did nothing whatsoever for Sebastian — but everything for someone unicorn-blooded.

Sebastian raised his hand to where James could see it better. The unicorn’s nostrils were flaring anxiously as he breathed, and his pupils had blown wide almost instantly — displacing all of that soul-scouring brown and leaving only an empty, hollow blackness. The immediacy of the change was fucking unnerving.

“Smell that, unicorn?” he taunted, waggling his fingers. “You can, can’t you? Sweet, virgin cunt.”

If the unicorn had any sense — and if it was certain of being permanent — he'd have skinned his own tongue and burned out the inside of his nose (or something, Sebastian was no physick) as soon as he'd run away. Nothing could make a unicorn weaken and fall, or run, like the smell of blood (physical contact was more extreme in its effects, but you could kill a unicorn that way, like with many allergies that worsened with proximity). And nothing could make a unicorn come trotting up, wagging its tongue, the way the smell of a goddamned virgin when she was bleeding could do. It was like some kind of fucking ambrosia for them. (Virgin boys had been approached by unicorns too, in rare instances, apparently, and girls not on their monthly — but that happened less often. The smell just didn’t usually carry well enough.)

No one understood _why_ the unicorn-bloods' mating ritual worked this way, but it did -- put two of them in proximity to the same virgin and sure enough they'd fuck each other in a heartbeat -- and apparently so long as they were in heat, if you wanted to call it that, they'd fuck just about anything _else_ you wanted them to, as well. Or so everyone had heard. Regular folks didn't get to have unicorns, so they didn't get to see the spectacle. It was only the province of the rich and powerful, and the popular fictional subject of smut papers. ('Happy unicorn pleasures twenty men and women, only ten copper pieces to watch,' Sebastian sometimes saw advertised — but when they sent him to investigate it, it was usually just some aging cow-blood who'd learned how to take cock for an hour straight.)

“Sebastian,” James cooed in a soft, smooth voice that didn’t sound remotely like his own. The smaller man stepped forward eagerly. He pressed his face up under Sebastian’s chin and nuzzled at his throat adoringly.

Sebastian froze for a second. The change was genuinely startling, and for just a moment, he nearly let James get ahold of his blood-smeared hand — but then he shook off the sense of eeriness he felt and remembered to pull his hand away, out of reach of James’s wandering fingers. The unicorn let out a sulky huff, in between tonguing at Sebastian’s throat.

Normally, he’d have hogtied the unicorn by now, gagged it and thrown it over the back of his horse to begin carrying back to the palace and delivering to the king. That was just how he’d done it the previous twelve times — drawn them in with the smell of a virgin, then trussed them up and carted them off lickety-split. He’d never gotten to experience this part before. The king would’ve killed him for taking those kinds of liberties.

Now, though, the king was dead and he needed this unicorn cooperative — and this unicorn didn’t _belong_ to anyone, not necessarily, so there was no one to tell him he couldn’t fuck it when it so clearly wanted him to — and judging by the stiff pressure against Sebastian’s upper thigh, James did, in fact, clearly want him to.

“Ah-ah, unicorn,” he chided, pleased that James was immediately as cooperative and frisky as he’d hoped. “You don’t get to have it yet.”

James squeezed Sebastian’s upper arm tensely for a moment. With his other hand, he reached up to cradle Sebastian’s face and mouth along his jawline, kissing and sucking a random trail. “I can do anything you want,” he said energetically. Both his hands moved down to pull at the laces on Sebastian’s shirtfront. “I _want_ to do anything you want. I want you so much. So please — just one taste — ”

Sebastian caught both of James’s wrists in one hand, stealing a heated kiss before putting a bit of distance between them. “Tell me where it is you mean to go, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

James regarded him dazedly, most of his attention on Sebastian’s bloodied fingers. Clearly, he was having trouble focusing on the question. His gaze kept skipping back over to Sebastian’s red-smeared hand rather than his face. “I want,” he started, his voice starting to become panicked, “I want to go where you’re going. I want what you want. Whatever you want. Please. Please, Sebastian.” He tugged at his wrists, trying to free them, but even his impressive strength wasn’t enough to loosen Sebastian’s bruising grip. “I’ll do anything.”

Sebastian snarled out in warning. “No,” he said sharply, like he might’ve spoken if he were scolding an unruly dog. He pushed James backward, letting the unicorn’s own weight carry him off-balance, so that Sebastian’s hold on him was all that kept him upright. “Stop it,” he barked. “Focus. _Focus_. You need to answer me, James.”

James shook his head in confusion, wild and upset. “I’ll go where you go, I promise it, I _swear_ to you. I want to go where you want me to go. I want that so much. Please —”

“ _Answer my damned question, you stupid, mindless cunt!_ ” Sebastian rattled him physically back and forth, trying to avoid the sinking realization that James had probably already known — that James would’ve told him whatever his primitive hindbrain decided Sebastian wanted to hear in his singleminded need to get to the bleeding virgin he could smell on Sebastian’s fingers.

James was panicking sharply now, distressed at his inability to get to what he wanted, squirming and twisting with adrenaline-fueled strength. He managed to twist one arm free before Sebastian could catch it again, and reached out with immediate desperation to palm Sebastian’s cock through his trousers, encouraged when he found it hard and straining against the fabric. James looked up at him with pathetically hopeful eyes and a sickly embarrassing smile. “I could service you,” he offered in his sweetest voice. “You can be my master and I’ll be your slave, I’ll be — I’ll be your whore, just your stupid unicorn whore who loves it when you fuck him. Isn’t that what you want?”

Yes. Stupid whore. Fuck him. Fuck the disobedience out of him till he obeyed. No — _no_. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Sebastian roared and threw James to the ground, letting go of his arm to pin him by the throat instead.

He could see fear and something that looked suspiciously like anguish in James’s witless black eyes. “Please,” he begged, “I don’t know what you want. If you’d only tell me what you want, I’ll do it, I swear. Master.”

Even as worked up into a state of panic as he currently was, even with a hand to his throat, James was rutting his crotch against Sebastian’s thigh like he couldn’t help himself. That tempered Sebastian’s anger at being thwarted somewhat, hammered it into something else. “You’re pathetic,” he growled, shoving his knee forward abruptly so that James winced at the sudden pressure on his bollocks. “You act like you’re so much better than me, but right now, I could crush your little pink cock under my boot and you’d still beg me to fuck you, wouldn’t you? You’d let me do anything I wanted for just one little taste of some virgin’s hole. You’re just a whimpering horse cunt. Do you want my cock, horse cunt?”

James nodded enthusiastically. If there was any indication that Sebastian’s words bothered him, it was almost invisible in his eyes. All Sebastian could see was hunger, lust, and the new relief that he might be able to give Sebastian something he wanted. “Please fill me up,” he whispered, writhing on the floor, rubbing himself wantonly against Sebastian’s leg like an untrained pup. He was unlacing Sebastian’s trousers with inattentive ease, the sort that came only with long experience at a particular activity. Sebastian growled, imagining all the trousers his unicorn had removed from his previous lovers, all the men who’d heard the soft, impatient whimpers his unicorn was now making as it waited to be fucked. _Is that where you learned to say Master?_ he wondered. _Did you have to be a proper, genteel whore for them? Is that why you only say fuck when you’ve lost your temper?_ He reached down to rip through the ties on James’s trousers, pleased to find that the unicorn had laced them in some way that gave easily under Sebastian’s fingers.

James had soaked a wet patch through the front of his trousers. His cock was red and swollen and straining. Sebastian tugged James’s trousers off of him, and kicked his own off directly after, throwing them both to one side of the room.

“Finish undressing yourself, then me,” Sebastian ordered him.

James nodded, eyes now obediently downcast as he rose to his bare knees to start peeling off his tunic. “Yes, please.” When the unicorn’s own clothes were off, he took one assessing glance and then threw them off to the side exactly as Sebastian had done with his trousers.

He was less hasty with Sebastian’s remaining clothes. It took great and obvious force of will, the care and deliberacy he was using — his hands shook with controlled desperation, and he chewed prettily on his lower lip, eyes always down. He was well-trained. Each item he removed, he folded over his shoulder till he had Sebastian fully nude — to keep them from touching the ground, Sebastian guessed — then, when he was done, he held Sebastian’s clothing to him across both hands.

Sebastian took it all from him in a crumpled bunch and threw it across the room.

James fisted his hands at his sides, fingernails digging into his palms with the effort of keeping still. He looked up at Sebastian with pleading eyes, waiting to be told what to do.

“Pathetic,” Sebastian told him. He took James’s face in his hand, holding it by the jaw. “This is your true nature, when you give in to the animal inside you. You’re a stupid, rutting cockwhore who can’t think straight. Who can’t even answer a simple goddamned question.” He pushed James back down onto the floor so that he could lean over him. James quivered, but held still. “Do you think that ever happens to ravens?”

Sebastian expected that to get James’s temper up a bit. He’d like to see that — his proud, angry unicorn glaring at him, fighting with himself, ego against instinct — and then, finally, giving in to who he was, admitting Sebastian had well and truly bested him this time. Admitting he wanted him.

None of that happened. There was no ego in James’s big, hollow eyes now, none that Sebastian could see. He just reached up with one hand, touching his fingertips lightly against the side of Sebastian’s face, as though just touching him without permission was some manner of transgression. Behind all the animal lust in James’s eyes, all Sebastian could see was some sort of faint, quiet emotion he couldn’t read. “No,” James answered him. He licked his lips.

“I’ve hunted ravens before,” he said, sliding his hand down the unicorn’s chest. James’s skin was chilly, damp with a faint sheen of sweat already. “Difficult quarry. Crafty bastards. Spent two weeks stalking a raven, once. But unicorns . . .” He swiped a line of fluid off the tip of James’s twitching cock and brought it to his own mouth to taste. It was warm and sweet and vibrant, and made him all the more eager to fuck his little captive. James moaned and tried to arch up into his touch. “Unicorns are easy prey, you see? It took me less than a day to break you.”

James was barely paying attention. “Please,” he begged, his voice raw. “I can’t bear it. I’m trying to wait like you wish, but I can’t. Please.”

Sebastian leaned in till his mouth was nearly on top of James’s. “But last night you didn’t want my cock at all, don’t you remember? Last night you didn’t fuck tiger-bloods with your pure, porcelain hole, did you, you were too valuable for that. Right now you’d fuck any dozen men and women off the street, wouldn’t you?” He thought of the sign, _Happy unicorn pleasures twenty men and women, only ten coppers to watch_. As the king’s personal hunter, it had fallen to him to investigate any rumors of unicorn-bloods that hadn’t been rightfully turned over to the crown. He’d imagined, before, what it would be like to see a real unicorn fucking like they said they did, with wild, delighted abandon. He’d brought himself off to the fantasy just like so many people did, envisioning some pretty unicorn with his snowy hair and perky arse, taking load after load of hot come, his hole slippery and stretched from hard use. “You’d love every unwashed cock and cunt from here to the palace, wouldn’t you?”

James groaned. “Oh, God, yes.”

“Beg me for it.”

“Please,” James said without hesitating, his voice loud and sharp. “Please, Master, please fill me. Touch me. Anything, I’ll take anything you want. I’m good at it, I’m so much better than any raven, you’ll see.”

“Say you want me to fuck you.”

“Yes. Yes, I want you to fuck me.”

“Say you want my cock.”

“I want your cock.”

Sebastian smiled, loving the way the coarse words sounded on James’s proper lips. “Good unicorn,” he praised, his lips settling over James’s in a demanding kiss.

James kissed him back with an almost unnerving insistence. He took Sebastian’s tongue into his mouth hungrily, sucking harshly on it and nipping with his teeth if Sebastian tried to draw back. Sebastian laughed.

He reached down with both hands to tilt James’s hips up so he could fuck him face-to-face. The unicorn obligingly wrapped his legs around Sebastian’s waist.

Sebastian pressed two fingers down between James’s legs, tracing the rim of his hole just to tease at the skin briefly. The unicorn bucked wildly just at that small contact. When Sebastian pulled his mouth away from James’s to wet his fingers, James shook his head vehemently. “You don’t have to go easily,” he said, trying to tangle his fingers in Sebastian’s hair. “You can just fuck me. Please, I don’t want to wait.”

Sebastian rested his forehead against James’s and nodded. He couldn’t refuse an argument like that, and he couldn’t deny the desire to pound right into his unicorn’s tight, shivering body like he owned it. So instead he just spat into his hand, rubbing slickness onto his own cock before lining it up with James’s arsehole.

“Yes, yes,” James urged, peppering hasty kisses against the outside of Sebastian’s mouth. He cried out in what was obviously pain when Sebastian pressed into him, his taut muscles constricting against the invasion even as James dug his fingers tightly against Sebastian’s scalp to draw him closer. “Hurts,” James choked out, along with, “God, yes, good. Don’t stop. Please.”

So he didn’t. Sebastian leaned forward into the petite body underneath him until his bollocks slapped up against the unicorn’s sweet little bottom. So tight. So hot. He drew back right away, not waiting for James to settle, then thrust forward again. All the friction and pressure was incredible, like the unicorn’s body was trying to milk his cock with each thrust. He growled and moved faster, encouraged by James’s moaning and the pads of his fingers moving down to dig into Sebastian’s shoulderblades.

It didn’t take long, Sebastian slamming his big cock into the writhing, barely-stretched body underneath him, before the tiger-blood was close to orgasm, his cock hot and sensitive. James wasn’t nearly as close, somehow, despite the virgin-blood, despite how long and desperately he’d been aching for it, now — but as Sebastian watched him, he could see the unicorn making some kind of hasty assessment.

James hitched his legs upward, disentangling them from around Sebastian’s waist to hook them over the tops of Sebastian’s shoulders instead. Sebastian grinned, his sharp canines flashing. At this angle, he could immediately hit James deeper, at a slant that seemed to be even better for the unicorn. James whimpered and shook beneath him, Sebastian bracing his arms against the dusty floor so he could fold the unicorn up double, with James’s knees pushed back till they touched his shoulders every time the tiger pounded aggressively into him. Sebastian sucked the side of James’s neck harshly, and James offered his throat willingly, with no choice but to brace his hands on Sebastian’s forearms to steady himself through the tiger-blood’s rough fucking.

“Right there,” James gasped, all his muscles tightening around Sebastian as he must’ve started hitting him in just the right place up inside. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

For all the world, Sebastian didn’t want to stop. But he was close to coming, and not sure he could hold it off for very long, not while his cock was being worked so expertly by James and his perfect unicorn-blood arse. “Little whore,” he snarled into James’s throat, “you can’t get enough, can you? This is what you need, isn’t it? You need a big, strong man to fuck you raw. You like it really deep so it hurts you, don’t you?”

James moaned, high and loud, his cock jerking excitedly against Sebastian’s stomach. “Yes,” he agreed, his cheeks flushed, fingers crushing bruises into Sebastian’s arms. “I’m just, just a sick, filthy cockwhore who needs it this way, who loves the way it feels when it — anh — starts to burn.” He rolled his hips hard up against Sebastian’s, over and over, hissing quietly each time he hurt himself, but not slowing.

Sebastian growled in delight, feeling himself so close to coming now, the spines on his cock flaring. James squealed. The unicorn-blood squirmed, his jaw going slack with pain-pleasure, letting his insides be scored into sharp sensation by Sebastian’s cock.

Sebastian came with a low, deep howl, his hips snapping hard up into James’s body while he spilled himself inside the smaller man. Conscious that James still hadn’t found his release, and needed to, he forced himself to keep moving, cock sliding in and out as James found his way closer and closer.

“What do you need, unicorn?” Sebastian found himself asking, teeth grazing James’s earlobe. 

“Her,” James answered him straightaway. “Please, I need to taste her.”

Sebastian nodded, levering his weight onto just one hand, so he could still grind James’s body down into the floor while he put his other hand, dusty and red with dried virgin’s blood, up to the unicorn’s mouth.

James sucked down Sebastian’s fingers greedily, savoring every crusted flake of rusty color that he could lick off of them. He let out a near-constant stream of bright cries of ecstasy, so emphatic that Sebastian was nearly jealous he’d never tasted anything as good as James made virgin’s blood sound.

The unicorn reached down two-handed to grab his own prick, wrapping his fingers around himself and attempting frantically to jerk himself off. He moved at a rough pace, fingers no doubt chafing himself, cheeks red as he turned his face away from what he was doing as though it were somehow different from everything else they’d just done.

James mumbled something, the words muffled around Sebastian’s fingers. He was still suckling at them like teats.

Sebastian had to pull his hand away forcibly. “What was that?” he asked.

James colored all the way down to his shoulders. He continued to tug at his own cock, face still pinched with lust and need. “Please,” he gasped, voice soft. “Order me to come.”

Somehow that request unnerved Sebastian, somewhere deep in his gut, in a way that nothing before it had seemed quite as eerie. It came to him, suddenly, that he hadn’t just taken control, hadn’t just asserted his power, as he’d meant to — he’d made the unicorn _vulnerable_ to him, had stripped away his ability to look after himself and left him, for the moment, dependent on the person nearest-by — Sebastian — to provide for his needs. Now here was James, a shade of the person he’d been a day ago, an hour ago. Forced to beg kindness from the very person who’d struck him down.

Sebastian felt the weight of responsibility settling in on him. He met James’s eyes — his bottomless, black eyes — and nodded. “Come for me, unicorn.”

James’s eyes fluttered closed, his body responding to the command immediately. He threw his head back as he came, a crisp yell of satisfaction dying on his lips as soon as it was born. He whimpered, arms roped around Sebastian’s neck and clinging to him. Sebastian was still buried deep in him, and relaxed into the feeling.

James tilted his head up to put his mouth next to Sebastian’s ear, his voice soft and seductive. “More,” he whispered. “Please.”

Sebastian chuckled. “Alright, pretty. Alright, I’ll give you as much as you need. I just need a few minutes to regroup.” Tiger-bloods could fuck off-and-on for hours, if they had a partner who could sustain that kind of pace. Sebastian rarely did, but that didn’t mean he’d lost his capacity for it.

“No, you don’t,” the unicorn interrupted him, his voice chipper. James scooped some of the come off of where it had spattered on his chest, puddling into the faint grooves of his ribs. He held it up toward Sebastian’s mouth. “Please.” He looked worried that Sebastian might refuse.

Sebastian realized, belately, that he could still feel the unicorn’s stiff erection pressed between their two bodies, unflagging even after having just gotten off. James ground his hips wantonly against Sebastian’s, trying to stir the tiger’s softening prick back to life. “Please fuck me again with your thick cock,” James tried, sweet and obeisant, echoing the way Sebastian had previously told him to beg. “Please fuck your stupid unicorn.”

James’s come had a sugary tang to it, even with Sebastian licking it off the oil-salty pads of his fingers. It brought his energy back to him in a heady rush, just as his blood and his come had the night before. In seconds, he felt ready to rut his unicorn again. “On your knees,” he set his terms, adjusting James’s slender limbs and twisting him around on his cock to position him the way he wanted.

The last glimpse he got of James’s face, before the unicorn-blood obediently pressed his nose to the floor, showed his eyes keyed-up but relieved, and with that same, soft emotion lurking in the background that he hadn’t been able to place before.

Weariness, he decided.

Sebastian felt something like guilt. He rolled his hips up into James’s, keeping up a rhythm, but just like that, all he could see were the traces of tired resignation underpinning the unicorn-blood’s eager posture. It was the same as the night before, all of it the same — just disguised from view by the hormone-driven need to fuck compulsively until he finally wore the impulse out. All he could see was a man trapped inside a weak, disloyal body that he’d been trying his best to overcome even so.

His cock began to wilt along with his enthusiasm. James noticed it straightaway. He rocked back against him faster, trying to do the work for him, fucking himself on Sebastian’s cock. “Come on,” James whimpered, repeating it a few times like a chant. 

“How long does it last?” Sebastian asked him. He tried to concentrate on nothing but the feeling of James’s tight arse, the way it squeezed up and down the length of his cock with each stroke, but he couldn’t put the situation completely out of his mind. He couldn’t put James’s _eyes_ out of his mind.

James shook his head. “I don’t know. It varies. Sometimes hours . . . sometimes days.”

Days — nonstop like this?

Shame tugged at the edges of the conscience Sebastian wouldn’t have believed he possessed. It was his fault James was in his current state. He’d done this. Hours or days, it was Sebastian’s responsibility to see him through it.

Somehow. Hell.

 _Sometimes days_ rang in his head like a mission bell. How in God’s name was he going to manage that without resting?

Perceptive to an unnerving degree, even through a haze of lust and fucking, James answered him as though he’d read his thoughts: “You can put your hand inside me, I swear I can take it. Or anything else, anything you want. If this isn’t what you want. If it isn’t good. Please.”

Sebastian bent closer over him, pressing his teeth against James’s shoulder just above the scabbed skin where he’d marked him the night before. James was his to take care of. His responsibility. His unicorn.

His.

“Tell me what you need,” Sebastian told him.

* * * *

It was dark, and far into the early hours of the morning before James’s mating cycle finally ran its course. He was pale as a ghost wherever his skin wasn’t bruised, and he could barely find his way to his feet. Sebastian carried him to their borrowed bed and collapsed alongside him, one arm slung over the unicorn’s slim waist. He slept like the dead.

By daybreak, James was gone.


End file.
